The cultural persistence and political salience of the ‘un/deserving poor’ – the moral categorization of people in poverty – rests, inter alia, on the use of Christianity to construct a class-inflected position from which to judge or categorize the lives of others. Interpretation of the claim that the poor are ‘always with you’ (Matthew 26:11) plays a role in this process of asymmetrical moralization, specifically through the framing of ‘the poor’ as a class with divinely-mandated functions and virtues. To develop theological challenges to asymmetrical moralization, I examine patterns in contemporary and historical interpretation of the gospel accounts of the woman who anoints Jesus (the wider context of the claim that the poor are ‘always with you’). I propose that, while many interpreters attempt to use these texts to establish a position from which to judge both the woman and ‘the poor’, they can be reread in a way that undermines that construction.

中文翻译：

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永远与你同在：质疑联合国/应得的穷人的神学建构

“不值得/应得的穷人”——贫困人口的道德分类——的文化持久性和政治显着性，除其他外, 关于使用基督教来构建一个阶级屈折的立场，从中判断或分类他人的生活。对穷人“永远与你同在”（马太福音 26 章 11 节）的说法的解释在这种不对称的道德化过程中发挥了作用，特别是通过将“穷人”界定为具有神圣规定的职能和美德的阶级。为了对不对称的道德化提出神学挑战，我研究了当代和历史上对膏抹耶稣的女人的福音记述的模式（声称穷人“永远和你在一起”的更广泛的背景）。我建议，虽然许多解释者试图使用这些文本来建立一个立场来判断妇女和“穷人”，但可以以破坏这种结构的方式重新阅读它们。